1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to printing of paper hardcopy output from data processing systems and in particular to printing of watermarks on hardcopy output from data processing systems. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to consistently forcing watermarks to be printed under administrative control on print jobs submitted to selected printers or print queues.
2. Description of the Related Art
Watermarks are among various security mechanisms, including wax seals and embossing (such as by a notary public""s seal), long used for source identification or similar control over printed matter. Traditional watermarks are markings in paper resulting from differences in thickness, usually produced by the differential pressure of a projecting design on a processing roll during paper manufacture and visible when the paper is held up to the light or viewed at certain angles with respect to incident light. Contemporary xe2x80x9cwatermarks,xe2x80x9d which are simply preselected, recognizable text or graphics overlaid on other printed matter, originated with xerographic (copier) hardware, which permitted configuration of such watermarks by a keypad and/or display.
In contemporary desktop publishing or printing, watermarks are text or graphics overlaid on an application-rendered page to be printed. Some commercial word processor applications support the creation of watermarks overlaid on a print job in a manner analogous to page numbering or headers/footers, but at the control of the user and with no override at a printer or network print queue. These watermarks are application dependent and not administrator controlled. Printer hardware has not been provided with the option of hardware configurable watermarks analogous to xerographic mechanisms.
In an information kiosk environment such as a university transcript office or Olympic kiosk, the ability to consistently force the printing of watermarks may be of significant value. Guaranteeing that watermarks are printed for specific printers or print queues may reduce the possibility of fraudulent printing of xe2x80x9cofficialxe2x80x9d documents, such as university transcripts.
In a network computing environment, watermarks may reduce waste and enforce enterprise printer restrictions, for example by printing the used, hostname and printer name in the watermark on every page of a print job. Printer resources such as toner and paper are a significant business expense in many enterprises, especially for emerging high quality color printers which are pervasive and very expensive to operate.
In many enterprises, forced printing of watermarks may serve as a security mechanism for proprietary information. For example, printer-specific watermark variances which are undetectable without minute examination or comparison may serve to identify which printer was employed to print information recovered from a source to which it was leaked, narrowing the number of individuals who could have been the source of the hardcopy recovered.
Forced watermarks could also limit enterprise liability when dispersing information. For example, watermarks containing the phrases xe2x80x9cDRAFTxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cUNAPPROVEDxe2x80x9d, or xe2x80x9cUSE WITH CAUTION UNTIL APPROVEDxe2x80x9d could be consistently printed on print outs for jobs generated by most users in an enterprise, with the watermark suppressed on when a particular user having authority to approve the information released prints the document.
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide a mechanism for consistently printing a watermark, without regard to user selected print job properties, on print jobs submitted to a printer or print queue.
It is therefore one object of the present invention to provide improved printing of paper hardcopy output from data processing systems.
It is another object of the present invention to provide improved printing of watermarks on hardcopy output from data processing systems.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a mechanism for consistently forcing watermarks to be printed under administrative control on print jobs submitted to selected printers or print queues.
The foregoing objects are achieved as is now described. A watermark property is specified for a print queue, subject to control only by network administrators. The value within the watermark may be a pointer to a graphic image, text, or a logical value, allowing, flexible specification of a watermark on a printer by printer basis. The queue watermark property overrides any print job watermark properties before the print job is submitted to the print driver, regardless of whether the print job watermark was set in the job properties locally or remotely, by a user or an application. The queue watermark property thus serves as a distinct, mandatory watermark associated with the print queue, whether local or network. The watermark property setting is retained by a persistent parameter in configuration information for the print server hosting the print queue, which is employed to initialize the queue. As a queue property,, which ordinary users will not normally be permitted to control, the watermark property may be protected from modification or circumvention by any user not having network administrator status.
The above as well as additional objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent in the following detailed written description.